


The Enemy of our Enemy

by captorvatiing, muchlessvermillion



Series: Second Sufferer AU [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Cult of the Signless Sufferer, Discussion of Helmsman Things, Ghosts, Head Injury, Headaches & Migraines, Legislacerators, M/M, Past Character Death, Revolutionary Karkat, The Universe Hates Sollux Captor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3896896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captorvatiing/pseuds/captorvatiing, https://archiveofourown.org/users/muchlessvermillion/pseuds/muchlessvermillion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You wake up some time just after midday sprawled across the sofa with an arm slung over your face and your glasses dangling precariously from the other hand.</p><p>A taste of what life is like in the Second Sufferer's inner circle. Sollux gets up at a ridiculous hour, does a series of increasingly stupid things, and very nearly manages not to fuck everything up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alternately titled: Sollux Captor's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

You wake up some time just after midday sprawled across the sofa with an arm slung over your face and your glasses dangling precariously from the other hand. It takes you two whole minutes to phase back into reality and work out what the last thing you remember doing was. Equius had been chewing you out over trollian and you’d gotten up to go… get a drink? No. Well. Maybe. Some empty excuse that meant you could leave him stewing for a couple of minutes before sending him a nice leisurely fuck you, except the world had done that sudden tunnel vision thing, rushing towards you and away at the same time like you were being chased by the Nazgûl. Conveniently your body had auto-piloted to the nearest soft surface before you hit the deck. 

You remember calloused hands guiding you, a part of you knows that they are colder than they should be but you’re not sure what you’re comparing them to. 

_“Oh, Sollux.”_ A voice chastises gently.

According to the time stamp on your last message that was just after sunrise. Fuck, half the day wasted already. Two of the last energy drinks within some eighty clicks rattle forlornly in the box by the side of your makeshift desk as you crack the third open and gulp half of it down in one. Equius clearly gave up on you and went to sleep hours ago but you send him the reply he was waiting on anyway. You close a message from Nepeta that she hasn’t bothered to dress up as anything other than the shipping horseshit it is without bothering to read it and flick over to another window where there’s a message waiting from - oh. Oh fuck.

> ALERT! user: caligulasAquarium is attempting to connect to the 2ECURE network  
> checking authorization...  
> user authorized  
> caligulasAquarium has been connected to the 2ECURE network  
=caligulasAquarium started trolling twinArmageddons=  
CA: hey sol  
CA: sol i knoww youre awwake cmon noww  
CA: honestly wwhat is even the point a givving me this contact if you aint gonna answwer me  
CA: i fuckin hate this netwwork just so you knoww  
CA: got all shirty wwith me wwhen i tried to connect to you  
CA: wwhat buisness has a machine got bein shirty with the likes a me i ask you  
CA: dumbass machine  
CA: wwill you hurry the fuck up and get your freaky mutant head outta your ass  
CA: sol  
CA: sol you embarrassin pisssoaked nincompoop answer the communications device  
CA: get your ass back here i aint got all night  
CA: its hot as a hoofbeasts swweaty shame globes out here sol  
CA: the least you could do is make it wworth my fuckin time  
CA: bein awwake at such an ungodly hour an so on  
TA: 2weet 2ufferer2 2aggy mantiit2 what.  
CA: fuckin finally  
TA: thii2 network ii2 for iimportant bu2iine22 only ampora, you better have 2omethiing more iintere2tiing two talk about than the fuckiing weather.  
CA: no i dont i just had this overwwhelmin urge to talk to someone awwful about the alternia sun at one oclock in the goddamn afternoon  
CA: my other hobbies include ingesting sun warm sugary juggalo muck that i found in the dirt and stickin my bulge directly into a wworkin blender  
TA: lovely two hear from you two ed.  
TA: what’2 the ii22ue?  
CA: fefs got a message she wwanted passin on but she aint going anywwhere near this computer unless its absolutely fuckin necessary  
TA: faiir.  
CA: you knoww wwhat i wwish you could say that to her face  
CA: anywway she says to wwatch out for something big going dowwn soon but to trust that your friend wwill get you through  
CA: dont ask wwhat thats supposed to mean cause i dont knoww and she wwont tell me  
CA: wwhich i highly suspect means she doesn’t have the foggiest clue either but wwhatevver  
CA: her horrible lusus has been wwhisperin shit to her  
CA: not vvery nice shit  
TA: fuck that’2 not good.  
TA: alriight me22age reciieved ii’ll keep an eye out.  
TA: not 2ure why you needed two 2end thii2 priioriity iin the miiddle of the day but whatever.  
CA: sol wwhen i say soon i mean you may as wwell grab an umbrella and brace yourself because shit has most likely already hit the fan  
CA: its not like this prophecy wwas made yesterevve  
CA: this is the first stable internet connection ivve had in a perigee  
CA: and dont you start about wwarning you sooner cause im sat in a godforsaken rock pool at high fuckin noon to get this message to you right noww  
TA: 2hiit ii thiink ii know what iit ii2.  
CA: wwhat  
TA: ii’ve got two go.  
=twinArmageddons ceased trolling caligulasAquarium=  
> user caligulasAquarium has been booted from the 2ECURE network  
> ADMIIN HAS LOCKED THE 2ECURE NETWORK

Someone will probably be pissed that you locked them all out for the day but you don’t give a fuck. You spend a few minutes tapping your blunt claws on the metal next to your keyboard in even beats of two before deciding you were going to have to take the band aid approach. It’s your least favourite, but it does have a certain appeal in that it Gets Shit Done. First person on the list to have their injury sticker ripped off is naturally your glorious leader. You glance at the clock. Three in the afternoon. Eh, he’s probably awake by now. You take a second to look down and make sure your pants are present before crawling out of your hole to go and find him. 

Karkat is not glaring at you from the door of the most secure respite block in the camp when you barge in. There’s only one other place you’d be likely to find him at this hour so you trudge off in the direction of the makeshift arena the tougher members of your outfit had put together and try to ignore the sharp prickling feeling building around one of your horns. It’s just a shitty chalk circle containing four well beaten and patched sack cloth dummies and surrounded on all sides by stacks of metal crates. Karkat doesn’t notice you when you approach, so much for being aware of your surroundings, and you watch him spin in a neat circle and slice the grain out of one, two, three of the dummies in quick succession. Two kill shots, one incapacitation, one left whole but not unguarded. Not bad. He turns to you, huffing out hot heavy breaths and snorts at the look on your face. 

“This isn’t my first rodeo Captor, you don’t need to look so fucking surprised.” He says. 

He’s got a frustrated curl to his lip but it’s early and he’s sleeping in glorified water. Daymares never bothered you that much even KO’d in the middle of your office, hard to hear the horror terrors over the demanding doomed anyway, but you know he’s haunted by some fucked up shit. You figure it’s probably a bad idea to kick your plan into motion when he’s in such a shitty mood so you set it on a back burner and silently kick yourself instead. You’re not much further in than “should be taking better care of him” when he kicks your ankle to get your attention.

“Want to go a few rounds?” He suggests. “You look like shit, so I’ll let you use your terrible overclocked pan fuckery and everything like the cheating mutant grubfucker you are. Did you even sleep? You realise I need you alive and conscious tonight right? Because if you pass out in the middle of my.. sermon, because you can’t handle the heaving smelly weight of your own stupidity any longer I will kick your ass so thoroughly that your ancestors will feel it.”

His hesitation to name the meeting is duly noted and filed away.

“Sure.” You say.

It comes out as “thurr” and you cringe but either Karkat has the grace to ignore it or he didn’t notice because he doesn’t even laugh. Maybe you do need to sleep. When was the last time you ate something that didn’t come in a foil bag? He’s going to kick your ass, psionics or not. You dig some rough wooden throwing daggers out of one of the boxes. Not your usual fare, but you’ve been advised to practise with other weapons since you don’t strictly need a proper strife specibus so it’s kind of pointless to specialise. In theory the more shit you can wedge between someone’s eyes the better. Not that you practise often. You’re a high level psionic, the highest level psionic you’ve heard of let alone met, and you’ve yet to encounter anything that you couldn’t just disintegrate with your mind. What you lack in fine control you more than make up with in sheer brute force. The prickling around your horns tells you that that’s a terrible battle strategy and you’re a fucking idiot with terrible habits. Karkat would probably tell you the same, so you pick up the knives and you drop into defensive position on the opposite side of the ring.

Karkat fights like a whirling dervish pailed a boulder. Hot and tense and just a little contradictory, just like everything else about him. He spins in tight half circles, never fully turning his back, and the edges of his blunted sickles come at you one after the other so fast that it always seems like there’s one more than you know there is. Defense was never your strong point so you duck and dodge and at one point jump into the air and straight over his head as you try to get behind him quick enough to throw a knife without him looking. Your shots miss, over and over again until you finally manage to get a hit in by distracting him with a flashy but ultimately pointless flare of psionics that makes your head ache sharply and curving one of the wooden blades round behind him. It hits the back of his head with a dull thunk and he laughs.

“I’d have won if you weren’t such a miserable cheating sack of hoofbeast droppings.” He says.

He won anyway, really. His sickles made contact so many fucking times that if it was a real strife he’d have had your guts trailing across the floor like some macabre religious art before you’d even taken a shot. One of your eyes is going dull, you can feel it.

“Why were you looking for me anyway?” He says.

You do a double take and he snorts.

“What? Am I supposed to believe you actually came down here with the intention of working out? It’s a fucking miracle you still have enough muscle mass to drag your sorry ass out of your chair, excuse the fuck out of me for not believing that you suddenly got the urge to work on your strife skills.”

“Maybe I was looking for Nepeta.” You say.

“At three oclock in the afternoon.”

You still have the scars from last time you tried to wake Nepeta up at a stupid time. Okay, no.

“I got a message from ED.”

He coughs and starts picking up the knives and packing his things away with his back is turned to you before you can read his reaction. You think he misses that sack of bulges although fuck if you’ll ever know why.

“It wasn’t exactly a social call.” You continue, “He’s holed up fuck knows where with FF. The short version is that we need to cancel the sermon.”

“No.”

“That wasn’t a question KK.” 

“I don’t care, it’s not happening.” He says. “Or should I say it is fucking happening, because I didn’t come this far to just drop tail and run. This is what we’re _here for._ ” 

“It’s too risky, you’re not-”

Your argument is cut short by a little voice from behind you. 

“...Oh.” It says.

You both spin round in unison and the small troll who interrupted jumps a step back like you might turn your argument on her.

“What’s up?” Karkat asks. “Come on fuckstick, spit it out.”

“Oh, the cult sent an envoy saying that you should meet them. Oh, and that if you don’t-”

Bingo. You see the realisation cross his face. He shoots you a glare for being right and sighs like he’s a thousand sweeps old.

“Right, well first of all tell them my offer to ram their entire operation right up their own festering nooks piece by fractured, corrupt piece still stands, just like it did when I sent the last three envoys packing and wow! Would you look at that? Exactly like it will the next fucktrillion times! If they want to see me they can come to the meeting like everyone else because I don’t care how hard they want to shove their sniffnodes up my ancestor’s sphincter they’re not better than anyone else. Maybe that way they can at least try and get schoolfed on the shit they’re pretending to preach before I ignore them.” 

It’s still Karkat, but he gives orders like leading is in his blood. Maybe it is. He used to bluster and bark about how he was clearly the lynchpin of your little hatch group and boss you all around by just shouting the loudest but this is different. Now when he bosses people around they actually want to do what he says. You’re constantly mystified by it and you’re really fucking glad that you’ve got the twin defenses of psionics and shades to make it a little less obvious that you’re gawping. 

“Who told you to bring this message to me personally?” He says

“Halzen sir she thinks that-”

“The obnoxiously broad asshole with the thick horns?” He makes a small frustrated noise in the back of his throat and waves a hand to cut the messenger off. “I know her. I know exactly what she thinks. Go back to her and tell her that if she _thinks_ that I’m going to start giving a fuck about that cult of self serving assholes then she’s welcome to think it in their camp instead of mine. Make it crystal fucking clear that she has no extra power here and if I catch her handing out orders again I’ll introduce her to her own pointy end. Then I want you to go to Equius - yeah I know, sorry - and tell him that I wont be attending the sermon in person tonight and get him to start setting up a projector feed. Don’t apologise for the short notice he can fucking deal. Tell someone on Leijons team that I need to talk to her when she gets up, and if they press for details say we’re going to keep her team on the ground to protect any idiots who actually show up to watch my enormous digital head spew this horseshit, so they probably don’t have to worry about any changes to whatever Nepeta’s plan is personally, but all key players who the Sufferists might take an interest in are to stay behind with me. Got all that?”

The messenger nods frantically.

“Then what are you waiting for?” He says.

They all but run. Karkat rounds on you and for a second you think he’s going to punch you in the face but he sags and softens and his mouth clicks shut and opens again and the only thing that comes out of it is -

“...Coffee?”


	2. Chapter 2

_“Sollux.”_

There’s an odd disconnect for a couple of seconds as the steam from your coffee fades from your glasses and Karkat snaps his claws an inch from your nose. 

“Alternia to Sollux.” He repeats. It’s a different voice.

You shake your head and blink at him. “What?”

“Dude, are you okay?” He’s frowning. You can’t for the life of you remember what he was talking about before. How long was he talking, even? “You look like shit.”

“I’m fine.” You say. 

He tilts his head to the side and gives you one of the most solid bitch faces you’ve seen in a while. “Are you sure you can do this today?” He says. 

Oh, right. He needs you to set up the feed if he’s going to do this remotely you guess he was trying to ask you about that. 

“We can ask one of your minions-”

You shake your head to cut him off. Ow.

“Hell no.” You say. “They’d fuck it up.”

You want to say something else about how people need to hear what he has to say, about how you need to be there to make sure shit doesn’t go down, to make sure they’re all safe, but your head throbs and your vision swims and you have to snap your mouth shut and bite your tongue to keep back a wave of nausea. The smell of coffee between your hands is suddenly the most hideous thing that’s ever wafted up your olfactory nub. Karkat is probably still frowning when you shove yourself up from the table on shaky hands but you’re not sure because if you look up at his face you’re going to throw up on it.

“I’m fine, but I’ll even go and get some more sleep, just for you, lusus.” You slur and poke your tongue out at him as you turn to leave. 

You hit the floor.

She shakes her head at you and smiles. 

Your heart stops for two whole beats and you feel them pass. One. Two. Like ticks of a clock. Somehow she makes you more aware of _everything_ and you wonder if you just imagined the cog on her dress move. 

“Oh, Sollux.” Aradia sighs again, and you think a little piece of you just died.

She holds out a hand and lifts you off the floor like you weigh nothing, and every muscle in your body goes tense. It’s weird, not knowing what to do with yourself. Familiar, sure but weird, especially when it’s with her because everything always came so naturally between the two of you. You don’t know if you can convince yourself it really is her. Your mind drifts back to clouds of dust from her ruined hive clogging your lungs, your pan heavy with static, your hands still sticky with mind honey. Her hand comes up to the side of your face and forces you to open your eyes. You hadn’t even realised they were shut.

“Sollux I need you to stop freaking out, we haven’t got much time.” 

You stutter something incoherent like the stupid, useless sack of shit you are and blink at her, gripping her arms like she might float away. 

“This is a dream! Well kind of, you’re not really asleep you’re unconscious and I’m dead, but that doesn’t matter.” She says.

“Doesn’t matter my ass what the f-”

“Oh shush. You really need to get over this Sollux, none of us like watching you treat yourself so badly all the time.” She frowns, but the frown doesn’t last for long before that fixed grin is back on her face. “It doesn’t matter because I’m not here to help you come to some life changing revelation about what happened between us, that’s something you need to work out on your own! I am here to talk to you about Karkat.” 

You’re scowling at her like a petulant child and you don’t care. God, you’ve missed her so much and here she is, bitching you out as if nothing happened. It’s bullshit, frankly. She doesn’t seem to notice or maybe she just flat out doesn’t care. You’re about to say something, to argue that you don’t want to talk about Karkat, you want to talk about her but she paps your cheek with big calloused hands and smiles at you the scowl melts right off your face. You feel worn out and just a little sad. Time to set your jaw and listen.

“What about Karkat?” You say.

“Well I can’t tell you exactly!” She says.

You make a noise that’s somewhere between wounded dog and interrobang out loud and throw your hands in the air. 

“I’m sorry Sollux! I really am.” She doesn’t look it. “But it’s all very complicated and there’s a great deal that you would be better off not knowing. No, really.” She admonishes. 

She knows you too well, she knows every look on your face. Knows, without even bothering to ask, that you hate not knowing. Sometimes you were sure the two of you could have a conversation in silence, saying everything you needed in the twitches of your eyebrows and the curves of her lips, but she isn’t the same as she was before and she’s looking right through you. This Aradia still knows you, but you don’t know her. It hurts. 

“You’re not going to stop freaking out on me are you?” She says. 

She’s frowning at you but you don’t care. The shards of your thinkpan are falling through your fingers faster than you can snatch them back up and Aradia is just standing there. She’s just standing there and frowning at you, and there are sparks snapping behind your eyes and you can’t breathe. You can’t fucking breathe, your chest is too tight, too small. Too small, like your too small skull. Your brain beating itself against the bone. You can’t do this, you can’t be here you have to move you have to get out you have to get air you have to you have to… 

You don’t know how long it is before she steps into your space and you can’t tell if you got your breathing under control or stopped it completely. She carefully pulls your own claws out of your elbows, leaving ten little pinpricks of yellow, and unfolds your arms back down to your sides. Gently, she tilts your chin up and urges you to focus. In front of you, standing hunched just to the side of her, is Karkat. He’s not your Karkat, he’s younger, much younger and his eyes are wide with instinctual fear but he’s standing there with his chin thrust forwards and his hands balled into fists. You hadn’t really noticed how much the two of you have been growing the last sweep or so but he’s tiny and his irises are still wriggler-grey. He’s giving you a similar look over, his eyes catching on the height of your horns and the dark scars on your darker skin. You wonder what other differences he’s noticed. When his eyes find the candy red band around your wrist and his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline so fast you have to choke back a hysterical laugh. 

“Hi.” You say.

“Good to see that you’re idiocy is a universal constant.” He says, ignoring when you startle. “A disease you carry across paradox space that transcends age and timelines that causes everyone who witnesses it to feel a warm pulse in their pusher and thank the wriggly elder gods that they aren’t you. Holy shit, when was the last time you ate? If you pass out while you’re passed out I will laugh so hard my acid sack will erupt and the whole thing will just flip flop out of my nose and away.” 

Nevermind. He hasn’t changed at all. You laugh so hard you’re almost sick, and Aradia slides an arm around your waist to hold you up when your knees threaten to buckle. Karkat stares at you like you’ve gone mad which, hey, you probably have. Somehow when you surface, breathless and with tears in your eyes, you are feeling much better.

“Bite me.” You wheeze, and he scoffs.

Aradia goes to stand at his shoulder and smiles at you. “We need a favour.”

“You have to let ‘me’ do the, nyergh, meeting thing.” Karkat answers before you ask. “Get all those assholes together and shove him in front of them, like that isn’t going to go completely fucking terribly. Why not! Future me is probably an asshole anyway.” 

You shrug a shoulder in agreement and he snorts at you.

“Even if it looks like something terrible is going to happen you have to keep him there.” Says Aradia. “The show must go on, Sollux!” 

“Why?” You ask, just because you can. 

“I can’t tell you.” Aradia says. It’s not like you expected a different answer but you huff anyway. “But it’s important.” She insists. “And I’ll be there with you the whole time. Karkat too.”

“No we won’t.” Karkat says. “Well, not me me. Other me, alternate future me, will be obviously but we’re not the same fucking person. For example, he’s a colossal asshole erupting hot feel good anti-empire bullshit like it was open season on doritos los tacos and I am a sensible troll with a healthy sense of self preservation. It’s not even you you who’s going to be there. Do you have to be so fucking cryptic and spooky all the time? Give the guy a break he probably just knocked his remaining brain cells out of his ears with that spectacular idiot fueled nose dive.”

“Why don’t you tell him then?” She says, still beaming.

“Ugh, look it’s-” Karkat starts talking but his voice fades into a drone of information peppered with vitriol and it’s hard to focus on more than two words at a time. You catch “died early” and “watching you” and a mess of insults that don’t fit together right. Something cold is touching your forehead but you can’t seem to move your arm to get it off.

“He will be perfectly fine, though I’d like to remind you that he-” 

“I am aware of the situation Equius, thank you.” That sounds like Kanaya. “I take it Karkat is still-”

What the fuck, where are those voices coming from? You lift up your hand to rub at your temple and your glasses are gone. Karkat has stopped talking and for some reason you’ve closed your eyes. 

_Oh, right._ You think, when you open them and the side of Kanaya’s head slowly phases into view, a neat brush stroke of black against the stark white walls of one of your mediculler blocks. Of course it was a dream, it had to be a fucking dream. Shit, maybe you were driving yourself further round the bend than you thought. 

Equius and Kanaya are talking around you in hushed voices. No, correction - they’re talking _about_ you in hushed voices. You open your mouth and try to wrangle something witty out of the fuzzy depths of your brain and all you come out with is a hoarse whine that you choke on as you make it. Awesome. Can’t even be dignified in pain. It does the trick of setting their attention back on you though and Kanaya moves back, making space for you to sit up and finish your coughing fit as she gestures one of nervous lackies that had been hovering around you to her side.

“Will someone please inform Karkat he can now stop hyperventilating into a paper nutrition sack? Thank you.” She turns on you in one fluid motion as you haul yourself up, “ _Sollux._ ” She says and ohh boy, are you in trouble. 

“M’fine.” You slur, blinking the too-hot sparks out of your eyes.

“Fine!” She says, a little shrill. “Oh yes, of course. You are absolutely fine! As I understand it Imperial conditioning drills are designed to be executed on trolls who are malnourished-” 

“Shh! Shh shhh, shhh.” You frantically shush her with your hands all over her face and it says something about how scrambled you are and how worried she is that she doesn’t push you off before you smudge her lipstick. You drop your hands sheepishly back to your sides and round on Equius instead. “You _told!_ ”

“You dropped unconscious, onto stone from standing no less, with no warning and remained unresponsive for the best part of an hour. I consider it a miracle that you did not show any symptoms of a seizure during that time and I highly suspect you may have suffered additional damage.” He says. His voice is strained and you can see the muscle in his jaw bulging under his skin. He’s mad at you, but it’s not the fun mad where his face goes blue and he starts stuttering out horse puns and sweating buckets while he tries to insult your clearly superior intelligence, it’s the kind of mad where you can barely see the black of his lips because he’s grinding his teeth so tightly and you think if he punched you in the face he wouldn’t bother to make sure his fist didn’t come out the other side. 

“I’m _fine._ ” You insist and you refuse to apologise but Kanaya is scowling at you too and the guilt is slowly dripping through the cracks. Yet again it’s up to you to do damage control because in your brief absence everyone ran around bumping into each other like wrigglers. “You can’t tell Karkat. Tell me you didn’t tell Karkat.” 

“I did not tell Karkat.” Says Equius.

“I have no intention to go behind your back either,” Kanaya says, “frankly I’m disappointed that you thought I would. We had a deal, Sollux.”

“The deal was to watch out for KK, this has nothing to do with our deal.” You say. “If anything not telling him has everything to do with the deal because telling him will, will, fucking- no. We’re not telling him.”

“You will have to tell him eventually.” She says.

You know she’s right, but that doesn’t matter. The conditioning is just the first step, well, no. There were hundreds of tiny preceding steps, tests that had to be run, equipment acquired and decisions made, but the conditioning is the first real step towards getting you helm ready. It sounds drastic but you did the math and it’s the only solution that makes any sense. Karkat needs to get off planet, now more than ever. You’re all creeping towards adult pupation, after that no one on Alternia will be able to listen to you without shitting thier wriggler butt wraps and tensions between the cult and your ragtag crew have never been higher. It’s only a matter of time before someone gets it into their head to play the Judahs to your Sufferer and sells you out to the highbloods for money and the guise of the “greater good”. Not to mention the highbloods themselves have been getting closer and closer with every attack and if they work out that the information about your militia that you’ve been leaking is almost entirely fabricated all they’d have to do is pin you down with a slightly bigger force and attack. So what if you’ve been pushing yourself a little harder than usual lately? If they work you’re vulnerable before you’re ready to be grafted into the ship you’re all fucked. The sooner you can shoot all these idiots up into orbit and out of trouble the better. 

“Not yet.” You say. “If you tell him now he’ll try and stop us and we don’t have time to argue with him about this.” 

“And what if I would like to argue with you about this?” Says Kanaya. 

Fuck. You didn’t even consider that the others would fight you. Well, fine. If you have to explain the plan a little slower for other people then so be it.

“Don’t?” You say. You plead. “It’s not like I want this KN, it’s the only option. We need to get out of here and to get out of here we need a helmsman it’s as simple as that.” 

“And you are, of course, the only psionic on Alternia available to take the job.” 

“Yes, and fuck you for insinuating otherwise. I’m not subjecting anyone else to this bullshit. Holy shit, I know I’m an asshole but give me a little credit. Chaining some naive wriggler up to the cover art from Psionics First Daymare is pretty low on my to do list.” You say. “Besides with my dual core processing there’s a, a fair chance that I’ll actually survive this shit but the other volunteers? No way.” 

Kanaya looks to Equius. “Is that true?” 

“Yes.” He says. “The other candidates all tested at a much lower rating and our experiments with the durability of organic growth mediums when exposed to the modified biowire cultures show that-”

“I swear to god if you call us ‘organic growth mediums’ one more time I’m going to remove your fucking bulge with my teeth.” You interrupt with hiss.

He ignores you and soldiers on. “Show that Captor’s mutated equipment is the ideal environment for sustaining artificial life.” 

“That sounds horrifying, am I supposed to be reassured?” Kanaya says.

“Yes.” You say. “It means I’m least likely to suffer FRS and because of the tele- slash electro- kinetic duality of my psionics, which most people don’t have, I have the best chance of safely adapting to a symbiotic relationship with the biowire.” She waits patiently for further explanation. You sigh. “It means I’m least likely to fucking die! And I’m the one who really understands what they’re signing up for. And I’m the fastest.” You add, confirming any suspicions she might have that you’re being more than a little petulant. 

“Karkat will not appreciate his… Best friend, being confined to a helmsblock for the rest of his sorry days.” She says.

“I know, I have a plan but it’s.” You cringe and hope she doesn’t notice. It’s a fucking disaster, so far. In theory the plan is perfectly sound, but Equius has been pushing for you to experiment on a live subject before you try it on yourself and you spend most of your research time frothing at the mouth over his bullshit instead of doing any work. “It’s in the early stages. I don’t want to make out like I can pull it off and then have the whole thing blow up in my face.”

‘The whole thing’ blowing up technically includes your face, but hey. Let’s not mention that to Kanaya. 

She purses her lips and for a horrible couple of seconds you think she’s going to tell you she doesn't want you doing it, and you honestly dont know what you’d do then because you need her support on this and it never even occurred to you that anyone other than Karkat wouldn’t immediately understand. Her lips part slowly and you ready yourself for a verbal beat down but it doesn’t come, and it’s right then that Karkat bursts through the door and almost tramples her in his rush to make sure you’re okay. Your eyes widen slightly and Kanaya gives you a tight nod. Right then, you’ll talk about this later.

Karkat is already talking and you missed the start but it was something along the lines of, “Are you okay? Oh god, you better be okay you absolute fucking shitlord. I cannot BELIEVE you, if you would be so kind to just think back to your wrigglerhood schoolfeed specials you might recall something about trolls needing FOOD and SLEEP and-” 

You tune out his anger and just lean back against the wall, your legs dangling over the edge of the cold examination table and stare vacantly past the hazy shape of his face. The afterimage of young Karkat easily overlaps with it and you find yourself mesmerised by the way his cheeks have hollowed out over the sweeps and the bright red bleeding in at the edges of his irises. He’s got lines on his face now that weren’t there before, little creases from sweeps and sweeps of scowling at everyone and a scar on his lip from the time someone threw a rock at him during a sermon. (You’d almost smeared them across the pavement but Karkat had hauled you away by the horns and stormed right up to them so he could chew them out for it face to face. They’d left in a hurry, cowed but not beaten, and he’d come back to you whole and satisfied and laughed in your face when you’d fussed about his teeth.) It suits him, now that you’re looking. Not that you haven’t looked before. You mean, you haven’t been _looking_ you just- You kill that train of thought just in time to hear,

“-aaaand you’re not even fucking listening. Sollux? SOLLUX!” 

You go “What?” and duck when he tries to hit you. 

It’s only then, about five minutes too late when he’s scowling at you like he might swing twice, that you realise he’s been crying. Fuck, you really are an asshole. You wrap your hand around his wrist and tug.

“I’m fine.” You say. It’s not comforting by itself, it’s a lie you tell him every single day, but it’s familiar enough that he scoffs and hauls his ass onto the platform next to you.

“You’re not fine you putrid sack of bulges, you’re a fucking disaster.” He says. “It’s a good job we don’t actually need you today. I’m delegating the stream to Aliice and you’re going back to sleep. Don’t argue, I know you’re already brimming with excuses for showing up to this shitshow, I can practically see them gushing out of your mouth like an plugged up load gaper but I’m not changing my mind on this.” 

You grab his other arm and he jumps. “Shit, shit KK the sermon, we have to go through with it. You have to be there.” 

“What.” He thinks you’ve lost your mind, it’s written all over his face. Hey, maybe you have. 

“You have to do this sermon in person.”

“But you said Feferi-” 

“I know, I know what I said but fuck what I said. I was wrong, we have to do this.”

“...Are you concussed?” He says.

The three of them are looking at you with similar expressions of concern. You open your mouth to argue with them but you realise too late that your entire argument is “it’s got to be legit because my dead ex girlfriend appeared to me in a dream and told me so!” You can’t say that that out loud without being dismissed completely so you clench your jaw and stare at them in turn as you desperately try to find an explanation that won't make you sound like a fucking lunatic.

“I’m not concussed.” Is the first thing you say. It seems like a good place to start. “I.” Oh god, you cringe preemptively. “I had a… a dream about… Uhm. The Handmaid.” 

Karkat just throws both his hands up in the air and jumps off the platform in favour of pacing the room, Kanaya is looking at you with her knuckles pressed delicately to her lips and Equius is refusing to look at you at all. Awesome. You wave your hands through the air like you might be able to clear it by force.

“Not like- I’m not fucking crazy.” You say, making yourself sound exponentially more crazy.

“No one said that you were, Sollux.” Says Kanaya. “When you say the Handmaid…?” 

Actually you’re not sure why you said the Handmaid, it just felt right. You suppose all the cosmic prophecy and the whole invading your dreams with visions of the past thing makes Aradia a likely candidate and you’re pretty sure she’d approve of the comparison even if it isn’t strictly true. Hell, maybe it is true. Is the Handmaid one troll or many? Maybe it was Aradia all along.

“I mean the fucking mythical Handmaid, the Demoness. Servant of the gods, bringer of death, she who comes in green fire, yes. That Handmaid.” You say, digging the hole ever deeper. You run a hand through your hair and sigh. “Look I know how it sounds, but we’re already taking orders from one freaky voice from the void why not this one?” 

“Because this one isn’t fucking real?!” Shrieks Karkat. “Gl'bgolyb is very much definitely real. We’ve seen her. We’ve heard her.” He shivers and you do too, rubbing your knuckles under your nose. “The Handmaid is a stupid story your lusus told you to stop you talking to adults and getting yourself hauled off by slavers. If you've hit your already tragically damaged pan so hard that you've regressed to wrigglerhood I'm going to need to know because I need fair warning if I'm going to have to deal with your troll runescape phase again."

You roll your eyes at him. "I'm not pan damaged KK."

Equius makes a quiet noise of disbelief and you shoot a surreptitious bolt of blue lightning round to his ass.

Kanaya comes to your rescue. "To dismiss the supernatural while preaching the words of a troll who spoke quite enthusiastically about his visions of the apocalypse seems a little sanctimonious.” She says. “If the Handmaid was going to talk to any of us Sollux would be the safe assumption. His preoccupation with the doomed and dying makes him a storybook vessel for the angels of death."

You nod as enthusiastically as your head will allow. You don't mention that you guys also kinda dated that one time.

"Well," says KK, his glare slowly softening. "Do you hear anything now?"

"Always." You say. "...But no one familiar."

They all hesitate awkwardly, leaving a weird silence around the distant clatter of trolls waking up for the night. You're pretty sure they would all rather forget that you hear voices at all but fuck them, they don't have to live with it. Karkat sighs like a broken exhaust and heads for the door.

"Fine." He says. "Get some more sleep I'm going to talk to Nepeta."

Kanaya gets up and leaves with him and once again you're left alone with Equius. He opens his mouth to say something and you use your psionics to force his jaw shut.

"Don't." You say.


	3. Chapter 3

He makes you sleep in the medical grade sopor that you have stashed at the back of your lab and feigns sympathy well enough that it makes you feel a little ill. As much as you insist its not “like that” it’s not exactly a secret that you kind of want to pin him down and ride him like a pony but you never bothered to ask if he reciprocates and you probably never will because it doesn't matter anyway. Trusting the asshole to cut you open and put you together better might provide plenty of spank bank material in your fucked up pan but traditionally you’d call any troll who let's themselves be brought THAT low in front of their kismesis a corpse. No way would that work out, so what’s the point? 

Unfortunately for Equius, you're still a bulge chafing son of a barkbeast with appalling social graces so you don't even try to stop yourself from fuckin with him as he tries to examine you. Squirming on the platform with every touch of his cold hands.

"If you don't stay still," he says, surprisingly measured, "I will tie you down and do this the proper way."

"The fun way?" You sneer and he tightens his grip on your wrist enough that it might even bruise.

"If you could also keep your perversions to yourself for a moment, please."

You chalk the please up as an undeserved victory and shut your mouth, pointedly crossing your legs and biting your tongue as he jabs the needle into your arm. The syringe slowly fills up with ochre and you stare with a kind of morbid fascination as he pulls the needle which looks longer than your arm is thick out of your vein and drops it into a tube of something vaguely pink and the consistency of hot sugar. The thick goo hungrily absorbs your blood, darkening to a bright fuschia and seeming to swirl against the sides of the tube without being disturbed. You wrinkle your nose at it but Equius looks pleased. 

"I would like," he says, "to do a proper transfusion soon. The test culture is ready too, but Treeve has sourced us a new supplier for the suppressants if you would prefer to do it that way."

By 'that' way he means the easy way. The safe way. The way that doesn’t involve getting a parasitic semi-organic structure all up in your business. He says it like he knows you're not ready, you know it too so you bare your teeth like an idiot and rise to the challenge. "Wouldn't miss a chance to let you stuff me, Zahhak." You grin. "I can take it. We just need an excuse for KK why I can't walk right."

One of these days your innuendos are going to make that vein pop out of his forehead and you're going to laugh until you're sick. This time he just wipes his brow with a towel and accidentally bruises five fat fingerprints into your jaw as he turns your head to shine something in your eyes. Your eyes shine back and you blink.

"You realise you can't keep this a secret from him forever." He says. "I still don’t understand the need for secrecy in the first place. It is not as though you aren't a stubborn enough mule to continue despite his protests."

You say "He'll be furious." Instead of "but I'll feel bad" but the whine in your tone is the same.

"Naturally." He says. "Especially if what Nepeta has told me is true, but-"

"What did Nepeta tell you?"

He purses his lips and raises your arms above your head to continue working around you, sticking cold pads to your chest that tingle when he flicks on one of his machines. “He will be furious whenever you tell him. Perhaps more so if you tell him after you are installed.”

"Equius." You say. "What about Nepeta."

He merely hums in answer and you see the corner of his lips twitch up in a smirk. He completes the rest of the examination in as close to silence as he can even when you switch tracks and stop needling him in favour of beating yourself up. It’s infuriating and it means the process takes considerably longer than it should do because he’s not fucking listening to you. He hasn’t tried to nerf your psionics so you could technically fight back and feel less like a shitty piece of tech, but your pride and your self loathing brawl with each other and you don’t do more than spark fitfully between your horns. It’s not until hours later he sends you back to your block and it takes you a shamefully long time to realise what he's done.

Nepeta catches you as you race out of your room, shoving a chitin plate vest into your arms and hauling you along with her by the elbow.

“You’re LATE!” She says, as she bundles you into her truck and slams a fist against the back of the cab to signal the driver.

“Equius--” You start, but you bite your tongue and slap her arm as soon as you see the grin spreading across her face. 

She tries to grill you for gossip for the entire ride, switching between implying things about Equius and Karkat at dizzying speed, but you don’t tell her anything. You’re not actually sure how much you could tell her even if you were inclined to give her fuel for her stupid shipping fire. Equius presumably talks to her about what you two get up to behind closed doors, and you imagine the others do too, but you have no idea how much they let on and you’re fairly sure she’s using that to her advantage to sneak information out of all of you. In an alternate universe where you weren’t all filthy traitors she’d have been a jewel of the empire for sure. 

The truck pulls over a little away from the slowly gathering crowd and you stop listening completely because your eyes are on Karkat. He’s talking to some of Nepeta’s team while Kanaya fusses over his outfit. It’s stupid that you have to dress him up like that and you know he hates it but fuck if it doesn’t look effective when he raises his hands to scream at people and his sleeves are rolled up just enough to show bright angry slashes of red metal around his wrists. Everyone knows the story of the Sufferer, and by now everyone knows that Karkat is his descendant (second coming, they say, like they’re the same fucking person) and exploiting the connection bumps your little enterprise up from “group of cullbait wrigglers make some noise” to the “continuation of an ancient tradition of spiritual prophecy and social justice” which at the very least makes people curious enough to stop and listen and at best gives you a little more credibility which is a boon that you can’t really afford to lose. Nepeta elbows you in the spine so you stumble towards him and he immediately turns his bitching on you.

“You realise that chitin is, in fact, functionally useless as a fashionable manpurse and is best utilised as something you actually put on your body instead of swinging it around like a gormless asshole?” He says, gesturing to the plate still hanging from your hand. “Do you need help dressing yourself now as well? Kanaya, Kan- Kanaya oh my god, stop.”

You can’t help laughing as he ducks out of her reach before she can do anything with his hair. The plate looks stupid over your shirt when you pin it on but it keeps Karkat happy so you don’t bother to complain. He insists that everyone directly connected with him has some form of protection on them, even though he refuses to wear anything himself. You guess in a way it makes sense. You’re so busy watching his back and making sure that nothing more menacing than a paper ball gets into his personal space that you’re fairly sure you wouldn’t even notice if someone took a shot at you.

He bites his lip when he looks you over and gives you a tight little nod. “Are you ready?” 

You’re pretty sure he means “are you okay?” and you can’t help rolling your eyes a little. “Yeah,” you say. “Locked and loaded. Are you?” 

Behind him the crowd is getting restless and you can hear the quiet rustling of lots of trolls trying to be quiet all at once. His eyes snap up to yours and he flashes his fangs at you before whipping round to step onto the crates that serve as a makeshift stage.

"We live in a world where every aspect of our lives is defined by the goddamn hemospectrum.” He starts, and everyone goes still. “From the second we're hatched, little more than fucking grubloafs with faces, we're shuttled into different roles and expected to act a certain way and work a certain way. We have our jobs essentially pre-destined for it by ancestral precedent, and fuck, I know I'm not exactly a shining example of shedding my ancestor's example, but there should be at least the OPTION, you know?”

It hits hard because he really fucking means it and you feel a little twist of guilt in your gut because sure, he may not want to be up there sporting his ancestors second hand title but holy shit does it suit him. It’s weird as hell, like watching an alien puppet your friend from the inside, as if he’s being possessed by the Sufferer himself. Or, no. It’s like the Sufferer is a cloak he just shrugs on when he needs it, and it’s bizarre but you think if his ancestor sounded anything like he does then maybe you understand. Maybe you know what it was that made the Psiioniic rise up.

“We're all known for having different fighting styles, for fuck's sake. There's a way that bluebloods are supposed to punch versus brownbloods or goddamn indigos, and no one sees how stupid that is? Every little difference between us, every single thing that influences our lives, what we're taught, what our career options are, how likely we are to make it to adulthood- it's influenced by blood color! And that's ridiculous, right?” There’s a quiet murmur of assent through the crowd. “I can't be the only one. Sure, there are some physical differences between the different shades, but hell if I haven't met a hell of a lot of people that don't fit the mold, or worse; try so hard to fit in that they break themselves in the attempt.

“I was one of those. I tried so hard, I tried _so hard,_ ” he says. Your pusher twists, and you blow up the fruit someone was about to throw in their face. “And it was NEVER going to work, because people are all wired differently, and acting like you can treat all the members of each caste exactly the same isn't fair to ANYONE. Not even those at the very top. For every surprisingly bloodthirsty jadeblood, how many violets are there who shiver at the sight of blood, who are repulsed at what they have to do to prove themselves and keep their spots up high? It's too much pressure for anyone.”

There’s a ripple across the quiet and Karkat rolls his eyes. They want him up there telling them to fuck the system and bite up at the trolls who’d piss down. There’s a lot of Suffererists in the crowd tonight who just want another holy war. Part of you wants to agree with them, but you think of Feferi squishing you against her chest and wishing you luck the last time you saw her and Eridan taking the time to gripe at you about his husktop even when he’s sitting in the sun trying to deliver you a life or death prophecy, hell you think of Equius deliberately taking up your time to try and stop you from doing something stupid and you know that he’s right. You stand almost directly behind him, your horns crackling with power while you wait for the grumbling to die down.

“Eventually it will have to crack,” he says finally, “and the question is whether or not we work together to let the steam off before something catastrophic happens, or just wait for it all to tumble down around us. We're killing our own society by draining the people dry. We're hurting people- We're hurting ourselves. We kill those that are notably different because we're SCARED of them,” 

The grumbling hasn’t died down. You shoot a glance across Karkat to Nepeta and you miss the next part his speech because you’re moving around the crowd, searching for the source of the disturbance. Trolls are shoving eachother and someone is shouting but you can’t make out what they’re saying. 

“-is there anyone on it that's fully happy? Who isn't terrified all the goddamn time that they'll put a foot out of place or talk too loudly or take the wrong street and end up a bloody smear on the wall?”

Nepeta has found them and she whistles a signal to you before disappearing under someone’s arm into the centre of the scuffle. You walk back to Karkat’s side as quickly as you can without running and watch as Nepeta pins the arm of a brownblood with the Sufferer’s irons painted around his eyes but that’s not it, it’s not right. What are you missing?

“-are jadebloods that want nothing less than to work in the caverns, and I'd bet my goddamn wastechute that there are indigos that don't want to kill-”

All over the crowd you start to pick them out. Single trolls scattered amongst the others, instigators with cult symbols on their skin and their clothes who are inciting violence against anyone in the crowd higher than teal. You yell for Nepeta’s attention and catch the eye of one of her team instead. Your people are moving out to neutralize them, it’s not too late you can still save this.

“One of the cleverest, most vicious trolls I've ever had the pleasure of meeting is blind, for fuck's sake!”

You notice, far too late, the soldier stance of some of the higher bloods in the crowd, the shiny boots that mark a recent ensign. Most likely they’re young legislacerators, sent out to disrupt the meeting before the real law enforcement can show up and black bag the lot of you. There’s going to be a clash and there’s nothing you can do about it. One of the legislacerators catches your eye and flashes her fangs and your mind goes white hot, sparks buzzing over your skin as your vision goes tunneled. Karkat. You have to get Karkat out-

“-in a four wheel device, and geniuses with faulty mental wiring, and--”

The ball hits you right on the temple and the shock vibrates up through your horns. You try to slam your hands over your ears but it's too late and you stumble over your feet as the ground seems to slide out from under you. You reach for your powers to stop yourself from hitting the dirt but your skull feels like it’s vibrating and all you can hear is this pan splitting whistle and you can’t. Someone swears close by and you hear what you’re fairly sure is a scream before Karkat gets a grip on the back of your shirt and hauls you onto your feet, his face inches from yours and fraught with concern. 

“Captor? Sollux, hey. Hey.” 

“Holy fucking-” You say, your jaw still feels like it’s buzzing. “Shiiit. Psionics, I can’t-” 

“I know. I know.” He says. “I saw. Get your ass back to the truck, you’re no good to us dead.” 

You hear the clink of metal as he pulls his sickles out of his strife deck but before you can protest to him fighting he’s spun you around and shoved you away and by the time you catch your balance and turn back he’s gone.

“Shit.” You say. 

The meeting has devolved into chaos. The Sufferists are ill equipped and ill trained but they are used to fighting for their beliefs tooth and claw and they refuse to go down easy but the soldiers are pulling rank and pushing them back and for every officer that goes down there is another ready to take up their position. It’s all out war, low bloods versus high bloods, _exactly_ what Karkat was just preaching against. Cultists are pulling new members from the crowd, goading those who’d weren’t associated with them to fight by the side and you know what happens next. This is going to be a massacre. The newsfeed rolls through your brain - Sufferist Cult Sect causes Massacre at Batise. Mutant Leader Karkat Vantas seen at the center of the violence… But the problem is you can’t see him and you can’t break the crowd because they were prepared, they knew you would be here and they took you out first. They’re scared of you and they’re getting wise to your tricks, it’s just more proof that you need to get off this piss sodden rock as fast as trollishly possible.

You’re about to break through the crowd to look for him anyway when you feel a cold hand on your chest. It’s not pushing you back, it’s just there. A spot of chill under your clothes with no discernable source. As you stand there, your eyes frantically searching the space in front of you for some clue ghosts start rising from the ground around you. They take form slowly, the outline of trolls of all ages, milky off-white tinted all colours as they swirl through the fighting, their voices raising to a cacophonous whisper as the sounds of fighting die down around them. Several trolls drop their weapons and run. Some aren’t as easily discouraged but the swarm keeps whispering, pushing between people who are fighting and wrapping cold fingers around shoulders until they pale and abandon the fight. You see Karkat, his jaw hanging uselessly open and his eyes saucer wide as the ghosts swirl protectively around him. 

Then you see her.

Aradia is standing in front of you with her hand placed firmly on your chest, her face a gentle smile, her body outlined in a faded, translucent rust. 

_“Hi Sollux.”_

You open your mouth to answer but nothing comes out. Your eyes are stinging and you’ve had such a long day you just want to collapse into her arms but when you step towards her her hand fades through your ribcage. It’s hard to tell if the shiver that runs through you is because of her or just because of you. 

“Sorry about everything.” She says. “I can’t stay. I just want you to know that you’re going to be okay.” 

The fighting has almost died down completely, Nepeta and Karkat and a handful of others are sweeping up the remaining instigators and tending to the injured as the ghosts start fading out of existence.

You want to say something but you can’t make your squawkblister work, you are the most irredeemable trash, it is you. 

You want to say something.

“Sollux? Sollux!” Karkat grabs your shoulders and just like that Aradia and all the ghosts are gone. 

“What the FUCK, Karkat!” Your voice cracks and his hands jump back from you. “I was- I’m. I’m. Oh. Shit.” 

You manage to spark your psionics into gear just in time to abscond up up and away from whatever fucking mess you just caused. 

It’s a long, ill advised tantrum later that you slink back into the base with your hood drawn up over your horns and your head down. Your face is blotchy from crying and there’s a little blood crusted under your nose from the pan-addledly stupid stunt of flying and pushing your psionics after your brain had just been put through the grinder. Distantly you hope that someone picked up that psionic pulse grenade they hit you with so you can tear it apart and work out how to block them but that’s for later. Right now you just want to face plant into the soupy, shallow bowl of sludge you’ve been tentatively calling your recuperacoon and not talk to anyone for a week. 

Karkat is sat on the floor in front of your cupe when you open the door.

“Intel says that in all the chaos they ended up arresting a bunch of cultists who were after us, instead of the real targets who were, y’know. Us.” He says. “I applaud their incompetence. What we effectively did was take out two tweetbeasts with one rock without actually ever throwing the rock. So I guess your Handmaid tip ended up being surprisingly legit.” He’s trying to keep his mouth running but he can’t quite pick up the speed for one of his rants and every time he looks at you the little crease between his brows gets deeper. “Nepeta already swept the area. She said to give you this.” He holds out an envelope with a winky face drawn on it in teal and your stomach does a little flip. He gnaws on his lip and takes a deep breath and finally says, “That was Aradia back there, wasn’t it?”

“...Yeah.” You say.

“Are you okay?” 

“...No.”

He tugs on your jeans until you drop to your knees and pulls you against his chest. He smells like soap, cinnamon and something warm and oily and you give up holding yourself together and just bury your face in his jumper and whine. You end up curled up on the floor in the larval position with your head pillowed in his lap and his hand stroking through your hair and the two of you just sit there in silence for a while, clinging to each other like you were hatched yesterday. Eventually you take a shuddery breath and roll onto your back so you can look up at him.

“I thought,” you say, carefully forcing the words into a straight line. “That I was over it. But I’m not.” 

He just hums to show he’s listening and continues brushing his hand through your hair. You wonder if he’s pale for you. That would suck.

“It’s weird to think about her looking out for me.” You say lamely. It’s weird to think that while you’ve been sneaking around doing things you know she wouldn’t approve of she’s been there. The whole time. Probably shaking her ghost head and actively disapproving. “I convinced myself she wasn’t part of my life anymore but she was so now I just. Ugh.” 

“You know you can move on from what happened and still care.” Karkat says, his hand still warm against your scalp. “What happened between you two was some seriously messed up shit and no one is expecting you to completely forget about it like some emotionless fuckbot except for you.”

“I fucking hate being wrong.” You say.

He snorts and rubs his thumb up the outer curve of one of your smaller horns. “Tough shit.” 

You make a noise that was supposed to be a grumble but sounds more like a mewling kitten with a chest cold and bury your face back in his stomach like a pisswrapped wriggler. He doesn’t complain, he just keeps quietly petting your horns and your hair. You could stay here forever, and since both of you are done for the night you might just try. If he didn’t mind that is. Shit, maybe he minds. Maybe you’re crossing some kind of boundary here--

He pokes you in the side and you roll off him, sitting up but you’re still so close, your knees knock together and the only comfortable place to put your hand is in his lap and he’s still got one hand curled loosely around your hip. The tips of his teeth are digging into his bottom lip and he’s frowning at you like he has to concentrate. You’re about to open your mouth to ask him what’s wrong when he closes the short distance between you and kisses you. It’s a chaste kiss, a careful press of his lips against yours before he pulls back but it’s enough that when he pulls away his warmth lingers and the fork of your tongue darts out over between your lips like you could taste it. It definitely doesn’t taste pale. You’re too shocked to say anything and before you get your remaining battered brain cells in order he’s pulled back and cleared his throat.

“Get some more sleep, asshole.” is all he says before he kisses you again, quick and sloppy, like he had to do it before his courage burnt out. He shoves the envelope in your hand as he stands up and you are keenly aware of the brush of his fingertips against yours. You’re still staring at him like a fucking moron when he ducks out of your door.

It’s been one hell of a night already and you are entirely too tired for shit like critical thinking and processing feelings, so you haul yourself off the floor, strip down to your boxers, and take that lingering red warmth to ‘cupe with you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Karkat's sermon was written by the amazing [Rafi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/muchlessvermillion) and I highly reccomend bugging her to post the full version.


End file.
